


Angels Don't Exist

by greymadder (whatisausername)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Canon Backstory, Dreams, Hurt, Mentions of Violence, Non-Graphic Smut, Tragic Romance, Very Vague Wing AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-27 02:25:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7599850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatisausername/pseuds/greymadder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack kissed him frantically, breaking away only as Gabriel growled something against his lips. He never asked what it meant, and Gabriel never told him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Angels Don't Exist

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really know what this is, and to be honest I'm not usually a writer of this sort of "wings" thing, but I gave it a chance.
> 
> If you're not usually a reader of this type of thing, maybe you can too.

It was summer, and his wings were dark.

Gabriel watched the man shield his eyes from the sun. He was pretty, with clear blue eyes that rivalled the color of the sky above. He paid him no more mind than that.

It was winter, probably, and his wings were fuller now.

Jack was different from before. He was filled out, strong in a way that seemed to surpass then men that stood quietly and solemnly beside him in a line.

Gabriel stood there patiently, the cold Russian wind lashing at his face. When he turned back, the man was looking at him.

It was winter still when Gabriel’s wings were ripped to shreds by the bullets of an omnic.

The snow was red, and so were Jack’s palms as he knelt beside Gabriel, pulling him up and dragging him the whole way back. The whole time he was muttering to him, his own ragged breathing coming out along with his words. He said he’d seen Gabriel spread his wings to save the others from a rain of bullets.

Jack didn’t tell him that the rest of his unit had died only minutes later after Gabriel had fallen. He didn’t tell Gabriel that he had torn himself apart for nothing.

Gabriel found out eventually. He did not grieve – it had always been his rotten luck.

It was early spring when Gabriel felt a hand drift along the edges of his wings.

Jack’s fingers were splayed, carding through off-white plumage. He murmured something beneath his breath, and Gabriel read the word ‘beautiful’ on his lips, before pretending to drift back to sleep.

In his dreams he’d heard Jack say he’d grown up on a farm, that he’d planned on going back before the circumstances changed. Now, Gabriel dreamed of Jack stepping onto dry soil. The crops were withering away, blighted and dying and the sky was bare. Jack was older, wrinkles forming at the corners of his eyes as he fell to his knees, everything turning to dust in his palms, greyer than the sky that stretched above him.

Gabriel swallowed his grim discomfort when he awoke, and never told Jack about his dream.

Jack never found out. It was only a dream, after all.

In late fall, Gabriel’s wings were folded around them.

The soft ivory stuck to the sheen of sweat on Jack’s skin as he curled his arms around the other man. His own wings were spread out darkly beneath him, his legs spread as well as Gabriel moved between them.    

A low, breathy groan shuddered its way from Gabriel’s throat, Jack’s name rolling off his tongue as he thrust deeper and deeper, bodies rocking together, tucked away and quiet where they would not be disturbed.

Jack kissed him frantically, breaking away only as Gabriel growled something against his lips. He never asked what it meant, and Gabriel never told him.

It was summer again, and Jack’s wings glistened golden beneath the sun.

It wasn’t just his wings. _Everything_ about Jack shone.

Gabriel clenched his fists in anger. He wondered if a part of him was broken, that the brilliance that radiated from Jack in waves should only hurt his eyes.

Jack’s voice had Gabriel turning from the spot in the wall where cracks had spun like a spider’s web from the impact of where he’d struck it. He looked to Gabriel’s bloodied knuckles with concern. A gust of wind carded through his blond locks, and Gabriel wanted to do the same with his fingers.

After that, Gabriel couldn’t bring himself to look at Jack again, and so he turned and walked away.

It was winter, and Gabriel’s wings had grown darker at the edges.

He had Jack again, against a wall and in a hallway not meant for what they were doing.

Jack asked for a bed when Gabriel’s hand moved between his legs. With a grunt Gabriel relented, taking him back to his own quarters.

Jack’s wings shuddered along with his body as Gabriel fucked him there, instead. Dark feathers tangled in dark sheets that were starting to smell more like Jack’s cologne than Gabriel’s. The scent lingered even when Jack didn’t.

He buried his face in his hands when he heard the door close.

Gabriel laid alone in his bed, drifting to sleep with a handful of his bedsheets pressed against his nose. He had the same dream about Jack, but this time he was looking down at the man. Jack was pleading with someone. Gabriel awoke, shivering.

Gabriel didn’t know when or where he was, when he awoke with a pair of wings that weren’t his own.

They were dark and black, and felt hideous in the way that one waking up with a third arm would be appalled to find their body had birthed something new and grotesque overnight. He rolled over, head thrumming with an unbelievable pain.

He remembered in flashes. The hatred coming to a peak, erupting into an explosion that tore apart the Swiss base and Gabriel’s body itself. Golden hair and blue eyes – a dream. Golden hair and blue eyes again – not a dream. An angel, just as frightening as the ones his mother told him about as she clutched her rosary – no, not an angel, not real, not for him. A doctor. Burning pain and a flatline. Black.

Gabriel no longer kept track of seasons as they passed, nor did he care about the state of his wings.

He breathed out a thick black smoke, dragging the armored talons across his face. Where his gloved fingers clawed, he ceased to exist, only to exist a moment later as he was pieced back together by something he didn’t understand, but was controlled by.

He’d found out the same thing happened with a bullet. Gabriel thought it was like how no matter the length of time you hold your breath, your body won’t let you suffocate, only black out and cheat death. It didn’t stop him from trying. It was a cheap game and a cheaper existence.

He’d lived, but he’d never be alright. Sometimes he woke in the middle of the night, stirred from his recurring dreams. His wings were wiry and frail, stripped of each and every feather. Other nights he awoke to find them spread and beating against a nonexistent wind, trying to escape the creeping black that ebbed in the corners of his vision and seeped from his pores.

It was summer when Jack plucked a feather from the ground.

It was black, but it was not one of his own. He thought perhaps it should be white, but not quite. He thought of the same color, of the softness beneath his hands and of darkly handsome features that waded in the back of his mind, taunting him with whispers of the past. It was a face that belonged to memories that had long since faded, the only two men who remembered them having died a long time ago.

 He blinked once, before letting the feather drift back down to the ground. His expression steeled, Jack unwilling to admit he recognized it.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry for all the vague and metaphorical stuff.. please comment and kudos if you enjoyed.


End file.
